Christy Funsch, one of my local dance heroes, gave me 100 prompts for creative practice. In the end, it took me far more than 100 days. My documentation and rumination on the practice lives here.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Day 100: champagne and recap

#100 Meet XT & Ro for champagne and recap!

Six months after I started, I have reached the end. It looks like this:

I'm done. Done! The notion hasn't made itself at home just yet. It's visiting. What's the period at the end of this run on sentence that started back in November? I'm not ready to wrap it up in a tidy bow. It's all too weird. I'm forced to resort to metaphor.

The untidy take aways...

The few times I involved other people in this practice gave me such a sense of relief and support. It was the best way out of my heady spirals and well worn movement paths. There is something here about being open to influence, and the benefits of outward focus.

Having a daily practice makes me happier, for the most part. This particular practice was not always daily for me, clearly. But when it was daily-ish, it had a real effect on my general well-being, despite the artistic angst that popped up at regular intervals.

Yeah, I'm kind of neurotic and angsty about my creative life - surprise! Christy reframed this by suggesting that I am discerning and critical, and that those are important and useful qualities. Perhaps. I am still interested in connecting to the pleasure in dance and performance making.

The suggestion (for the entire project) to "try not to make anything" was the source of some struggles for me. Turns out that Ro's instructions didn't include that, and she was happily making things, and then reveling in the shedding days. I wonder how things would have been different without that concept.

Also in "what would it have been like if..." category: I wonder how it would have been if I hadn't been documenting this whole thing publicly. I'm glad I did. I liked putting all of this raw, unfinished stuff out there into the world. And there was something nice about running into someone, and they would mention reading one of the posts. Surprising, and a little strange, but nice. Maybe it's validating? Like, this is actually happening!

I loved the prompts that had to do with attention - improvising with the senses, observing people.

Space/location was a huge deal. So, so much dancing in my domestic space. It felt cramped a lot of the time, but more comfortable than being out in public space. When I felt stuck, I wanted to blame my bedroom. On the flip side, I'm sitting on my bed now writing this, and the room bears the traces of all that dancing. This is at once my private space, and a public performance space, through the magic of youtube. I like the vulnerability in that. Here I am. Here is where I sleep. Here is my stuff.

Public space was always complicated. That's one of the I'm left wanting to work on or figure out. How to claim space. How to bring creative process into public space, and be comfortable doing it. How to not worry about looking like a freak. How to dance like no one is watching when no one else is dancing and someone might be watching. Or, how to dance for an accidental audience the way I dance for an intentional audience in "real" performance.

Drawing doodley things while listening to music has become one of my favorite ways to relax, and the rediscovery of that came at least partially from this process.

I think it was good that I didn't see any of Ro's 100 days when I started mine. It was good to get onto my own path, without any pre-conceived notions. But seeing her beautiful book (which is the main repository of her documentation) today made me think that it would have been inspiring to see her responses to some of the prompts while I was still in the practice. Not the prompts I hadn't gotten to yet, but some that I had done. She approached things in ways I didn't even think of, and I think seeing that would have opened up even more possibilities and shaken things up. It comes back to where I started - the joys of influence.